


Least Resistance

by bearonthecouch



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Prison, Punishment, Rape, Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 06:26:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15018635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: This is what passes for mercy on Wobani.





	Least Resistance

Jyn can't remember the last time she ate. Her stomach hurts, but not as much as it did the day before. Or maybe she's just getting used to it. She does still feel the pain in her hands, which are cracked and bloody after countless hours digging through the rocky ground to fuel the Empire’s war machine. Her palms blister and then the blisters break and bleed and re-form and even ripping off scraps of fabric from her shirt to form a makeshift bandage can only do so much.

She squints against the dim light of the night cycle in the prison barracks. It's hard to judge the passage of time, but she thinks that more than half of her allotted sleep shift is already gone. Around her, dozens of females of varying species snore and snuffle in their bunks. Sometimes they scream, haunted by nightmares. Sometimes they cry quietly, haunted by the reality of their waking lives.

Jyn stares up at the low pre-fab ceiling, exhausted but unable to relax. She tenses up further as she hears the tromping of booted footsteps nearing her bunk. She rolls over onto her stomach, closes her eyes, pretends to sleep.

“Liana Hallick,” a stormtrooper’s modulated voice barks. It takes Jyn a dangerously long few heartbeats to remember that the name is supposed to be hers. She keeps her eyes closed. Breathes slow and deep.

“Prisoner Number 441091, get to your feet. Now!”

It's the _sleep cycle_. What could they possibly want from her? What did she do?

She hears a crackle of electricity as the guard takes the shock stick off his belt and activates it. Jyn sits up, quickly, and looks up into the man’s helmet visor, hoping to meet his eyes. Hoping to earn a little bit of what passes for mercy on Wobani.

“On your feet!” the stormtrooper repeats. He reaches out with armored fingers and grabs her arm, pulling her roughly from the bunk. She bangs her head against the empty bunk above hers, but she doesn't react to the minor pain. She has bigger problems. The shock stick still crackles, but the trooper hasn't hit her yet. And there's only the one. That's wrong. Stormtroopers always operate in pairs, and more often in squads of four.

Jyn worries. She feels as though she might vomit, despite the lack of food in her stomach. “What do you want?” she whispers. Quiet. Desperate. The stormtrooper doesn't respond. He just pushes her ahead of him, out toward the narrow hall that leads toward Intake and Processing in one direction and the hangar that holds the prisoner transports that take them to their work assignments, in the other.

Always before, when she has been in this hall, there have been shackles locked around her wrists and ankles, but this time the trooper has left her limbs free. This too is wrong. But it’s an opportunity she can’t afford to pass up.

She takes a deep and careful breath, then whirls around, a blur of motion. Her hands reach for his neck, trying to grab for the soft unarmored joint just under his helmet, trying to squeeze. Her leg kicks out for the inside of the stormtrooper’s leg, at the knee, where the plates of his armor come together. He grunts, and almost falls. “Bitch!” he snarls, and adrenaline still surges through Jyn’s body. She runs, as fast as she can. She is exhausted and starving. The hallway is narrow, and ends in a locked door.

An arc of blue light washes over her, the last thing she sees before her head slams against the stone floor.

The next time she opens her eyes, she sees stars. They dance in her vision, spinning around her. Stardust.

She gets to hands and knees, vomits up emptiness over and over, dry-heaving for several minutes, shivering and miserable.

Wherever she is, it's pitch black, and silent. Her heartbeat echoes in her ears. But she's alive. Her fingers reach for the cord around her neck, and find the crystal dangling from the end of it. It's still there, safe against her skin. She keeps one hand curled around it as she crawls along the rough stone floor of the isolation cell. Because of course, that's where she is. She’s only heard of these rooms, for beings deemed too dangerous or troublesome to house in the barracks. Her attack on the stormtrooper was met with Imperial justice, swift and sure.

Her throat burns. Her lips are cracked and dry. She needs water. How many hours has it been since her last gulp of a water ration out in the fields? Has it been a full day yet? Has it been more? But she has already learned the first rule of Wobani: if you don't work, you don't eat. You don't drink. And she isn't working. She is shivering in the dark.

She wraps her arms around her knees, and tries to conserve body heat. Her head still swims, and pounds with dull pain in time to her heartbeat. As the hours pass, the cold switches over to heat that is at first welcome and then unbearable. It is heat without light, a cell exposed to the elements but without windows.

She is soon soaked with sweat. She strips off her outer layers. She gasps for air, unable to breathe properly in the sweltering hotbox. She needs water. She sticks her hand into her mouth and sucks at her own sweat.

She manages to stand, after several weak attempts, and she fumbles along the walls, searching for a door, for a lock. But the walls are all smooth plassteel, and almost too hot to touch. She can touch both sides of the cell if she stands in the middle and stretches out. She cannot fully lay down without hitting a wall. She curls up instead, on her side, her fingers gently cradling the crystal that rests above her heart.

The room has switched from hot to cold again - day to night - the next time Jyn opens her eyes. She doesn't have the energy to move. But she hears something. Someone. There is someone moving on the other side of the door that she can't see or feel. She pulls herself up to a sitting position, leaning against the wall for support, and she watches the wall and listens to the sounds. Heavy footsteps. A click and then an electronic buzz,, and then the door slides open, a narrow passageway just big enough for an average humanoid to walk through. A stormtrooper stands in the doorway, blocking most of the little light that filters in from the star-scattered sky and the brighter beams of the searchlights that surround the camp. Somehow Jyn knows that this is the same trooper she'd tried to take down the night before. If it was the night before. He stares down at her from behind his darkened visor. The door slides shut behind him, responding to an unspoken command or maybe just on a timer. Jyn waits for the stormtrooper to click on a light, but he doesn't. She can hear him moving around. She hears his armor falling to the floor, every piece sounding louder as it lands. He takes off his helmet last. She can hear him breathing.

He is unarmored, she realizes. She could fight. But they are in a confined space, and her reflexes are slow. And bright light bursts across her vision, she squeezes her eyes shut instinctively. The snap and crackle of the shock stick burns away everything else. The stormtrooper presses the weapon to her shoulder, almost gently. Jyn screams as the electricity courses through her body. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it takes Jyn much longer to stop shaking and get herself under control. The pain lingers.

“You're not going to cause any more trouble, are you, Liana?”

The stormtrooper holds the shock stick in his left hand. It still crackles violently, and Jyn watches it carefully, drawn to the light even as she rightly fears the punishment the weapon inflicts.

With his right hand, the stormtrooper forces her up against the wall. “I asked you a question,” he growls.

“No,” Jyn promises. Her voice is a rough whisper. “I won't cause trouble.”

“Good girl.”

His hands pull at the waistband of her pants, but then he seems to change his mind. He takes a step back. Jyn can see his dark eyes reflected in the light cast by the shock stick. “Strip,” he orders.

It's not an unfamiliar command. She remembers the barking orders at Intake and Processing, and at the end of every work shift, when they come in from the fields, there are searches.

But this is different. This stormtrooper’s voice is almost soft when compared to the officers in I&P, but it's all the more chilling because of it. Jyn tastes bile rising up in her dry throat. She shakes her head.

The shock stick ignites its fiery pain against her side. Jyn falls to her knees. “I'm sorry,” she cries. The stormtrooper just watches her. His fingers dance across the hilt of his vicious weapon, as he waits to see what she’ll do, if she's learned her lesson.

Jyn pulls off her shirt, first, then her boots, her pants, her undergarments. They lie tangled in a heap at her feet.

The stormtrooper’s fingers explore her naked body, his right hand gently fondling her breast while his left hand still holds the shock stick. Jyn holds her breath. She’s trembling. Goosebumps rise on her skin.

The man traces his thumb in circles around her nipple until the sensitive flesh is aching. Jyn can feel herself becoming aroused even as she knows she doesn't want this. His fingers move up along the curve of her breast to trace her collarbone, to catch the cord that hangs around her neck. The crystal glints in the light.

“This is pretty.”

“Please don't,” Jyn whispers.

“Must be valuable to you,” he speculates. Just making idle conversation. Jyn shivers in the cold. The stormtrooper doesn't seem to notice.

“It was my mother’s,” Jyn says. She somehow manages to keep her voice steady.

The stormtrooper pulls the cord downward. A little more force and he could yank it from her neck. But he lets it go with a shrug and pushes her against the wall again. Jyn doesn't fight it. She spreads her legs at his wordless urging and he bends her over and takes her from behind. His right arm wraps around her upper body, supporting her weight. Almost like she's falling. Almost like he's catching her.

He still holds the shock stick in his left hand and Jyn keeps waiting for him to drop it but he doesn’t. Jyn focuses on the crackling light, the sparks that jump along the path of least resistance, up from the hilt of the stick in the stormtrooper’s hand to the business end of the weapon. The electricity surges in an endless loop while the stormtrooper thrusts and grinds and Jyn endures the assault in silence.

The stormtrooper is silent too, except for his grunts and heavy breathing. He finishes, pulls out, but he still doesn't let her fall. He presses her back against the wall, studying her face this time. Jyn would rather look at anything but him, but he doesn't let her break the contact. He runs his fingers through her hair. Almost gentle. “Good girl,” he praises. And now, finally, he thumbs the switch at the bottom of the shock stick that turns the weapon off, plunging them both into darkness.

Jyn lets out a sigh of relief. The stormtrooper turns on his helmet lamp, bathing the cell in a white glow. And he reaches into his belt pouch, pulling out a flexible bladder that holds maybe three or four field rations worth of water. He hands it to Jyn and she drinks it greedily, sucking down nearly all of it before she can stop herself, not caring that she’ll likely make herself sick.

While she drinks, the stormtrooper pulls his armor on and replaces his helmet without another word. He drops a food pack at her feet as he leaves the cell, locking the door behind him.

Jyn gets dressed and sits with her back against the wall, dipping her fingers into the nutrient paste and licking them clean, until there is nothing left.

This keeps her alive.

This is what passes for mercy on Wobani.


End file.
